No deal blow for Moon's vision of 'peace-driven' Korean
economy
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[March 01, 2019]
By Hyonhee Shin
HANOI (Reuters) - As word spread that a
summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim
Jong Un was ending early in failure, some South Korean officials at a
Hanoi media center watching a live feed of proceedings turned pale and
made hurried calls.
"The president might have to rewrite his speech," one official said in a
hushed voice, referring to an address Moon Jae-in was due to deliver on
Friday marking a national holiday.
The failure of Trump and Kim to reach an agreement at their high-stakes
summit in the Vietnamese capital is a blow for the South Korean
government, which had pinned hopes on an easing of U.S. sanctions on
North Korea leading to the reopening of inter-Korean projects including
a factory park, tourism zone and railway network.
Those projects, stymied by sanctions on North Korea, are key to a Moon
economic initiative that he sees as a driver for South Korea's moribund
economy, which is suffering its worst unemployment in a decade.
"For the Moon administration, the summit was make-or-break," said Lee
Chung-min, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace's Asia Programme.
"Moon wants to distract South Korean citizens from the sluggish economy
and growing unemployment by taking credit for inter-Korean peace and
boosting his party's chances in next year's parliamentary election."
Moon has been an ardent champion of efforts to end confrontation on the
Korean peninsula and nudge North Korea into giving up its nuclear
weapons in exchange for an end to sanctions and security guarantees.
He has pressed hard for sanctions relief, saying South Korea is the
"main stakeholder" in Korean peninsula issues.
Moon held three summits with Kim last year, mediating between Pyongyang
and Washington - at the request of the United States, Moon's office said
- when their exchanges soured.
In his speech on Friday, Moon had been set to unveil a grand vision of a
"new Korean peninsula regime" for the next 100 years, an inter-Korean
economic community, born from the ending of sanctions in return for
denuclearization.
That speech needed last-minute changes, given the outcome in Hanoi, but
only small ones according to another South Korea official who insisted
the basis of Moon's vision was unchanged.
"The new Korean peninsula regime is a new community of economic
co-operation that will be formed after the era of ideology and
factionalism is put behind us," a somber-looking Moon said at a ceremony
in Seoul.
A song called "Our Wish is Unification," popular in both of the Koreas,
played in the background as Moon spoke.
[to top of second column] |
South Korean President Moon Jae-in talks on the phone with U.S.
President Donald Trump at the Presidential Blue House in Seoul,
South Korea, February 28, 2019. The Presidential Blue House/Yonhap
via REUTERS
He urged the ushering in of a "peace-driven economy" and vowed to work with the
United States to get the inter-Korean economic projects back up on track.
'ACTIVE ROLE'
Moon's office said it regretted that no deal was struck at the summit but added
that the talks had made "more meaningful progress than ever".
After leaving Hanoi, Trump spoke to Moon and again encouraged him to play an
"active role as mediator", Moon's spokesman said.
But as the dust settles on the summit, there are questions as to whether the
enthusiasm of Moon and his top aides, including national security adviser Chung
Eui-yong, got the better of them.
Some analysts say they might have over-sold to Trump the willingness of Kim to
abandon the weapons that North Korea sees as the guarantee of its survival.
Days before the Hanoi summit, Moon offered to "ease the burden" on the United
States, saying South Korea could provide concessions to the North through
inter-Korean economic initiatives.
"It may not be the wisest thing to openly show how desperate you are, especially
when you know their gap is still wide," a diplomatic source in Seoul said,
requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
The set-back in Hanoi could exacerbate divisions within Moon's administration
between some officials who want South Korea to push ahead with the projects with
the North, and others who favor sticking to the U.S. line of "maximum pressure"
on the North.
Cho Tae-yong, a former South Korean nuclear negotiator, said a hasty deal in
Hanoi might in the longer run have been counter-productive for the goal of
denuclearization and for South Korea.
"The breakdown might mean a genuine initial step toward that goal which could
bring both sides closer to the shared definition of denuclearization and also
save South Korea's security," Cho told Reuters.
(This story refiles to delete extraneous words in paragraph 2 and 11.)
(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in
WASHINGTON; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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